Accel Partners, a longtime investor in social network Facebook, has created two new funds that add up to just over $1 billion, according to The New York Times.

One of the funds, totaling $525 million, will be used to invest in European start-ups.

But the interesting part, at least where juicy tech gossip is concerned, is the other $480 million, which is going toward a new late-stage venture fund. A few speculative bloggers have connected the dots and taken this to mean that Accel may be looking to pump more cash into Facebook.

The firm first invested in Facebook in 2005, and partner Jim Breyer sits on the social network's board of directors. With the recession starting to hit social-network ad spending, and some critics expressing concern about whether Facebook's revenue can keep pace with its wild growth, there's a legitimate question as to how effectively Facebook has battened down the hatches for the economic storm.

Raising more money would be an obvious solution, given the social network's repeated insistence that it's more important for the company to focus on expansion rather than profits for the next few years.